User blog:Kathleen Riddle/Kathleen Riddle
Kathleen Riddle: Diary of A Witch Chapter 1 Sleepless at Midnight In the dark and silence of the night, sleep wouldn't touch me. I was so tired, but my heart was wide-eyed and bushy tailed. I didn't understand why though. I'd never been excited for any of my other birthdays before, why was this one so different? Why hadn't I been excited for my 10th birthday? That was the year I escaped the single digit age. Why did it seem like my 11th was more, important? I finally decided that sleep had forgotten about me, and I threw the small quilt away from me. I sat up, and took a good look at the attic that I called, "my room". It was small, and cluttered, but considerably clean. The window was small and would not open. A towel stood in as a curtain, when the sun actually shone that is. The floor had tiny wood rot holes in it, and many scratches. Boxes littered the farthest most corner of the attic, but I wasn't allowed to look through them. The walls showed their wood through patches in the ugly wallpaper. As my eyes ventured back around to my small cot, I noticed I had been absentmindedly playing with a hole in my already worn down quilt. I looked at the tiny wind-up clock I got for my fifth birthday; it was all I've ever received. The red hands told me that it was about twelve minutes till mid-night. I felt something like butterflies flutter in my stomach. I was almost mad with myself for being so excited. I thought, you are only going to be disappointed Kathleen! Stop this! Your birthday doesn't matter to anyone in this household... And I was right. All my life, I'd done this, done that. Always pleasing everyone else but myself. My family considered me the maid, or slave, of the house; everyone except Tori, my older sister. She was always kind to me. She never said anything mean, or insulting. If she needed a favor of mine, she'd always say "please" & "thank you". She has always been the only person I've ever looked up to in my entire life. The rest of my "family" never said "please" or "thank you". It was always, "Kathleen, clean the kitchen!” or "Kathleen! You missed a spot!". Troy, my brother, is very athletic, and very popular at school. He has ways of getting a lot of people to follow his social "rule". This never really bothered me because I wasn't a very social person to begin with. My music teacher was the only teacher that gave me the time and day; she taught me out to play the piano. I'd stay after school "getting tutored", and meet Miss Jamie in the auditorium. Now, since we're on vacation, I can only practice on the pretend piano I drew on a piece of cardboard. I looked back at my mini clock to see that only three minutes had passed. My heart raced. Was mid-night ever going to get here, so I could go back to sleep? I laid back and a small snake came into my head. His name was Elder. I'd always thought that I'd dreamed the experience I had with the small green snake, but I knew it had really happened. When I was seven, I was cleaning around the boxes in my attic room. A small green rope was curled up in the corner hidden by the mountain of boxes. I had a pang of excitement when I thought it might be a jump rope, so I hurriedly picked it up. The jump rope tossed and turned like it had came to life, and sure enough it did. I dropped the snake, and hoped up on my bed like I'd seen women in aprons do on TV when there was a rat in the room. I looked around for the cliché broom, but it was clear across the room. I looked back at the snake. It had uncoiled and was looking around. "I'm sorry little guy. I thought you were a jump rope." I cocked my head at the snake, and let my mouth hang open because just then, the snake had said, "A jump rope! I, thank you very much, am a snake." I thought my imagination had gone wild! I looked at the snake with pure amazement. "Di-did you just t-talk?" "Didn't I? I'm Elder. You must be a witch." "Excuse me? That's not very nice!" "Oh dear, I didn't mean it as an insult! You have to be a witch to be able to speak parseltongue." "Parseltongue?" "You are speaking snake." "I thought you were speaking English?" "No. If I could speak English, all humans could understand me. Right?" "Oh..." This wasn't the only conversation we had. Elder stayed with me for a year before he wanted to go somewhere warmer. I knew he was right, but I was sincerely going to miss him. He was the only friend, besides Tori, that I had. I took him to the local zoo and asked them if they could ship him somewhere warmer. Of course, we live in Alaska, so I couldn't just set him free out in the wild. The zookeeper asked me how I found a snake in Alaska anyhow; I just told him it was a long story. I glanced at the clock again. It was just one minute to mid-night now. I sat up, and sat Indian style on my cot. I watched the clock and waited for the little hand to land on the twelve with its sister. As the little hand and the big hand united for the fourth time in the past twenty four hours, I turned eleven, and two very loud cracks that sounded like gun shots came from outside. Category:Blog posts